The minutes of TAB meetings are provided for informational purposes only. Discussions and decisions described in the minutes should not be interpreted as official or definitive TAB or OSDL policy. While efforts are made to ensure their accuracy and completeness, we regret we cannot guarantee that they are. If you have corrections or additions, please contact tech-board at lists.osdl.org

Friday February 2, 2007

Technical Advisory Board Conference Call Minutes

Attendees

James Bottomley Greg Kroah Hartman Randy Dunlap Chris Wright Christoph Lameter Jim Zemlin Tom Hanrahan Matt Mackall

Agenda:

1. The Linux Foundation - Jim Zemlin 2. Tech writer search 3. Japan linux symposium 4. Virtualization white paper 5. NDA next steps 6. Other business

   a) posting of minutes 
   b) Feedback of DCL meeting
   c) policy of funding travel for TAB

Action Items: Tom - work on expanding the TAB to include other open source

     developers beyond kernel developers.

Chris - help take feedback back to the virtualizaion task force James - to send Tom contacts at adaptec

1. Jim Zemlin joined the call to provide a brief status of the merger

  and asked what he can do for the tab.  The primary interests of the
  tab are the fellowship funds, and the NDA program.

  A question and answer was opened up for the TAB to discuss issues
  about the merger.

  Q: Is there much change in direction that the merger will bring?
  A: main change in direction -- will be integrating all work of LF
     and LSB into the Linux Foundation.  Changes to expect is to
     restructure the work group process so there is a single process
     for all.  Ian Murdock and Tom are working to define that process

  Q: At one point the TAB talked about expanding tab to be more than
     just the kernel and suggested we contunie to explore this
  A: We should do this.  It would be a healthy thing to do this. 
     AI:  Tom to begin working on this and will bring this up at the
     next meeting
     It was mentioned that elections for the TAB are at LKS and that 
     many non-kernel key developers won't be there.  But the election
     process was designed to make elections more flexible

  Q: How exactly are you going to certify applications?
  A: It will be difficult, but LSB has a certification program in
     place and they are working to improve it all the time.  Perhaps
     Ian Murdock will be able to discuss this with the TAB at a later
     date

  Q: Don't you compete against Linux distros?
  A: There is no intention to compete against the distros.  Distros
     like the LSB standard because it comes with a fairly large test
     suite

  Q: If you get certification right and the distros buy into it,
     perhaps you can use the model to get other areas of Linux to
     certify
  A: We will never be in the buisness of servce support relationsips;
     what we can do is help the distros improve code quality. 
     Printing is good example where all distros can work together.
     We feel we reached a reasonable balance with them

  Q: Will Ian be full time at LF
  A: Yes he will be the chief tech officer

  Q: operation going forward...  The TAB is self generating in terms
     of funding.  Do you have plans to keep it that way
  A: We want to help the TAB out with additional funding.  Jim is
     inclined to increase the cash that is allocated for funding
     travel.  At LF, for example, they spent a lot of funds to get
     key maintainers to meetings.  Jim Feels it is relatively cheap
     in relation to the amount of code these key package maintainers
     produced.

  Q: Centeralizing the effort for forming small mini-summits, the
     Linux Foundation could help organizing this
  A: LF is looking for ideas to help out with that.  Could there be
     a way to create combined meetings where LF board, LSB work
     groups, and TAB members all get together for technical meetings
     in order to contain costs, provide cross pollination of all
     attendees?  Perhaps have 2-3 meetings per year where we have
     seperate tracks that are disjoint but at the same basic location.

2. The search for tech writer

  The majority conversation was determined to be "in confidence".
  But a summary is provided here.

  The search for a technical writer is nearing completion.  
  Candidates should be informed of the TAB's decision shortly.

3. Japan symposium

  - Japan is working on a list of topics they want to hear, but they
    are asking for what we can provide.
  - getting close for finalizing the March agenda, but Tom wants to
    map out the entire year
  - What other topics do we want?
    Q: are the Japanese the drivers of the Symposiums?
    A: They are, but they also want our input to determine the
       direction the kernel is going
  - suggested topics:
    + focus on what current problems Japan has
    + why aren't they submitting code to the kernel?
    + can do a readout from the kernel summit (lks update)
    + Japan definitely interested in file systems
    + IPV6 
    + Multi-path or LVM
    + HA-failover 
    + embedded topics like footprint, real time, power management, and 
      flash file systems.
    + HPC, page migration
    + WIFI

  + Recruiting will be done at the Linux Storage Summit for candidates
    that may be able to provide talks in Japan about Multi-path 

 Tom would like the TAB members to think about being presenters since
 the Japanese would like to have kernel developers present

 Symposiums - Dates are scheduled as follows
  - March 13-14
  - July (about 3rd week)
  - November (about 2nd week)

 In March, the current agenda so far is:
  - Andrew: current state of kernel
  - Randy: kernel mentors, newbies, janitors
  - Tom: present forecast information discussed at DCL

4. Virtualization white paper

  Tom send out information to the task force members in response to
  Greg's comments on paper.  Tom sent out mail with responses to the
  questions just before the tab meeting.  It was decided to provide
  further discusson over email since no one had a chance to read the
  responses before the TAB meeting.

  Christoph and Greg wanted to understand the purpose of the white
  paper.  Is a one stop paper for those who don't know where to go to
  describe what the community has set.

  Q: Why not use the other resources such as the virtualization wiki?
  A: this paper predated the wiki and was geared not at the community
     but at end users that want to know about virtualization progress 
     in Linux.  Before the wiki was created, there was conflicting
     x86 information and the users in industry didn't know what to
     believe.

  Why not just use the existing wiki that was created to use as their
  information repository?

  Other comments about the paper:
   - The whole area of usage is not covered in the paper.
   - The speed at which the things are changing will make the paper
     perpetually obsolete.

   Action Item: Chirs to help take feedback back to the virtualizaion
   task force

5. NDA program.

  Maybe it is time to pick this up at a faster pace and approach
  Adaptec to see if this program would be of benefit to them.
  Action Item:  James to send Tom contacts at Adaptec

  It was suggested that a wiki should be created somewhere that 
  provides a matrix of who is interested in working on drivers and
  manufacturers that want developers to create open drivers for them.

6A.Posting of Minutes.

  A new minutes policy was proposed to allow the minutes of the TAB
  meetins to be posted more rapidly.

6B.Feedback of the DCL Face-to-Face meeting held January 24-26

  - need to move faster between subjects - allowed one person to
    dominate the discussions and made them longer than necessary
  - James gave presentation about the LF/OSDL merger
  - large discussion about binary device drivers in the kernel ensued
     + when vendors talk to end users, they blame kernel community
     + The kernel community needs to reach out to the end users to
       provide them with more education 
     + all users care about is certification
  - part of the solution is to get the distos and end users together
    with kernel developers and talk about what really are the problems
    and try to find solutions to the ones the developers can do
    something about.
  - OSDL has asked the LUAC what are the problems, but no information
    came up.  
  - There are two conflicting desires of users
     + absolutely no os churn
     + upgraded drivers
  - some elements of the roadmap was a bit confusing

6C.Travel budgets for summit sponsorships

  We don't have a formal policy for organizing travel and providing 
  funds for travel in place yet.  The intent is to provide funds
  to sponsor key attendees at summits but the account is currently
  empty. Until a policy is in place, send email to Tom for travel
  funding requests. The Linux Foundation needs to create a mechanism
  to easily request funding for travel.

  One summit coming up is a virtualization summit around the
  timeframe of OLS or LKS. This may require funding for sponsorships.